I’m excited to be writing about a close friend of ours, Matt Powers. Nick and I grew up with Powers, aka Blackbush. He was one of the OG CRAP heads:
That’s Blackbush on the very left in 2003, and this is him in 2010:
Blackbush used to be the most surf stoked grom around. White-blonde hair, mini-grom surf style, sponsors, all-day surf sessions, contests etc. One day he started to get into this thing new thing called drifting…
As far as we all knew, drifting consisted of peeling out around neighborhood corners in your mom’s car. We had no idea it was a legitimate sport.
After years of practice and hard work, crashing his car (I was in his old beater BMW the first time he every crashed trying to drift – on a rainy day after high school with colachis… but that’s different story in itself), getting dark hair and growing up, Matt’s dream of being a pro competitor morphed from surfing into drifting.
On weekends, he used to surf Windansea ALL DAY LONG, literally. His dad would come eat lunch on the beach with him, and that would be the only ten minutes he’d spend out of the water all day. His tenacity and hard work ethic is the exact same for drifting now that it once was for surfing.
Matt just finished up his first season as a professional driver on the Formula D circuit. He’s already turning heads with his wild style and ghetto-rig whip (so sick). Once he locks up enough sponsor money to get his car on the same level as the other drivers, he’s gonna tear it up!
The thing I’ve always respected about Powers is that he’s an independent thinker – he doesn’t give a damn about what other people think. He’d be reading racing magazines and listening to Nelly while the rest of the crew read surf mags and listened to punk. When we’d poke fun and talk shit, which we did all the time (standard), he’d shrug it off with his trademark “suck it!”
That’s why we’re proud to have Matt as a part of the CRAP Eyewear family as a brand ambassador. A roots CRAP homie since day 1.
All photos courtesy of Speed Hunters.
